Page 66 of Dark Chains: First Link
Syssi's mother didn't have any paranormal abilities, but then she had always been so focused on science and medicine that she might have suppressed any natural talents that seemed too out there for her. It was easy to dismiss visions as hallucinations or dreams, and when they came true, as coincidence.
She really needed to have a heart-to-heart with her mother that she'd never had, not even after revealing that she had turned immortal and was married into a clan of immortals. Her parents had accepted the news better than she'd expected and then had returned to Africa to continue their work.
"I think my mom should finally retire and she and my dad come live in the village," Syssi said when Kian returned to the bench.
He sat down. "You've been saying that for years."
"She's getting older. She can't continue working like that."
"Your mother will retire when they pry the stethoscope from her cold, dead hands."
Syssi cringed at the reminder that her mother wasn't immortal and didn't wish to be. She had been a pediatrician for forty-four years, and she viewed her profession as a calling, not a job. Retirement was a concept she acknowledged the way people acknowledged the existence of the space station. It was real, it was out there, and she had absolutely no intention of visiting.
"You are right. If she retires, she'll have nothing to keep her busy, and she'll wither away. Her work keeps her going."
"She could work at the clinic," Kian suggested. "We could always use another doctor. We don't have a pediatrician."
"We also don't have enough children who need medical care."
"We might have more soon," he said. "It depends on how many are extracted from the enclosure. It could be anywhere between zero and eight hundred."
She turned to look at him. "Do you intend to bring them to the village?"
"Of course. Where else would they go?"
"Including the enhanced soldiers?"
That gave him pause. "Maybe not them. They will have to stay at the keep until we can ascertain that they can be trusted. I won't bring a potential Trojan horse into our community."
25
DAVE
At zero four fifteen hours on Tuesday, the Eight left the hotel and drove the Humvee with the headlights off because their enhanced vision didn't need them, and even though stealth was not necessary yet, it would be once they reached the deserted road leading to their destination.
As always, Number Seven drove, guiding the vehicle along the narrow service road that hugged the island's southern ridge before curving toward the coast.
The southeastern coastline was the closest thing the island had to nowhere.
No barracks, no training grounds, no infrastructure of any kind. Just volcanic rock descending in jagged shelves toward cliffs that dropped straight into the ocean, the kind of sheer faces that made approach from the sea impossible and therefore made patrols unnecessary. There was no point in wasting manpower guarding terrain that the ocean guarded for free.
It was also less than two kilometers from the harem complex, which sat on a similar stretch of cliff-lined coast.
Number Seven parked behind a rock outcropping about half a kilometer from the drop zone. The outcropping was large enough to hide the Humvee from the service road above, but anyone who came down the slope on foot could see it.
"I'll stay with the vehicle," Number Seven offered.
The collective agreed. Having someone with the Humvee meant they could leave quickly if something went wrong, and it also meant that if a patrol spotted the vehicle, there was a soldier present to explain what it was doing there rather than an empty Humvee sitting in a location where it had no business being.
The other seven proceeded on foot, spreading out across the retrieval zone in a pattern that covered the hundred-and-fifty-meter radius specified as the micro-drone's landing zone. The terrain was rough underfoot, volcanic rock broken into uneven slabs and crevices with sparse, scrubby vegetation clinging to the gaps. No paths. No signs that anyone had walked here in months, maybe years.
With the moon hidden behind cloud cover that had rolled in from the west, the predawn darkness was still thick. Under normal circumstances, finding a matte black object the size of a cigarette lighter in this landscape would have been impossible. But once the infrared beacon activated on impact, its pulse would be visible to them from up to two hundred meters out.
Provided that the micro drone landed where it was supposed to.
They put on their night goggles and scanned for the infrared pulse, but zero five hundred hours came and went, and they had seen nothing dropping from the sky nor a beacon.
The collective processed the delay analytically, without the corrosive anxiety that they would have experienced beforeascending. In less evolved entities, fear and stress translated into a hormonal cascade designed to motivate action in the face of uncertainty, but the Eight's hormonal responses were too muted for it to gain traction. They registered the delay as a data point, assessed its implications, and continued scanning.
